MONTREAL — Health care experts meeting in Montreal at an international summit on pain management are calling on governments to provide reasonable access for treatment of acute and chronic pain, a problem they say affects one-fifth of the world's population.

Delegates from 84 countries at the first pain summit will issue a declaration Friday asserting that access to pain management is a fundamental human right.

The experts say that acute pain management is inadequate for more than 50 per cent of people in developed countries and 90 per cent of people in developing countries, while chronic non-cancer pain, which can be triggered by surgery, injury or disease, occurs in at least one in five people worldwide.

"The World Health Organization estimates that five billion people live in countries with low or no access to controlled medicines and have insufficient access to treatment for moderate to severe pain," said Dr. Michael Cousins, director of the Pain Management Research Institute in Sydney, Australia.

"With this declaration, it is our goal to ensure that countries have the knowledge and support to establish laws, policies and systems that will help those in pain receive fully adequate pain management assistance."

The declaration focuses on dealing with pain through strategies for health-care professionals, health policy frameworks and the management of pain with medications.

"It is our hope that, with this declaration, all countries will begin to develop policies and regulations regarding widespread access to pain management regardless of gender, race, age and other factors," said G.F. Gebhart, director of the Center for Pain Research at the University of Pittsburgh.